


Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

by darlathecyborgpluviophile



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: All hurt no comfort, Angst, Canon Disabled Character, Dissociation, Gen, Implied Torture, Lost in Wars Zine, PTSD, Suicidal Ideation, Trauma, World of Ruin, canon character death, zine fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:08:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27551293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlathecyborgpluviophile/pseuds/darlathecyborgpluviophile
Summary: Experts say – from the years-old articles that are still accessible with a Moogle search – that the best thing to do after a nightmare is to ground oneself. But what if everything looks the same, with nothing but darkness surrounding you? What if luxuries like stress balls and putty are nowhere to be found? What if you don’t want to be here and now either?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11
Collections: Lost in Wars - A FFXV World of Ruin Zine





	Tonight, Tonight, Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> I was in a zine! It's super rad and you should check it out if there's a seconds sale! Ily!!!!!!!!!!!! <3
> 
> Title is taken from the Genesis song of the same name.

Ignis sits stock-still, cradling the carton in his palms.

They’ve done it. Somehow, the ladies in the greenhouses have done it. He reaches into the wood container, and his fingertips brush against precious berries, plump yet oh-so-delicate under his touch. There’s a lot of them, a small hill that rises over the walls of the carton, and Ignis can’t help but wonder how Holly got them to his apartment without spilling any.

The last time Ignis grasped a handful of Ulwaat Berries was in Caem, in the cozy little kitchen of the safe house with Monica working around him, Iris and Talcott leaning across the bar to watch him bake with stars in their eyes, and the sounds of Noctis and Gladiolus talking on the porch outside. Despite everything, despite the raving compliments from their little family, the tarts hadn’t come out quite right.

Ignis continues touching the berries. Gods, they’re perfectly ripe. He can smell them from here.

He had planned to pick some in Tenebrae, during their sojourn after receiving the Tidemother’s blessing. Luna was going to be safe. A small wedding would have taken place there. He would have planned the whole thing, including the tarts, in their transient perfection. Noctis was going to –

Juice coats his gloved fingers, unexpectedly. Ignis doesn’t remember when he picked a berry up, nor when he started squeezing. He lets out a disappointed little sound, and pulls off his sticky glove to discard on the table in front of him.

For the first time this morning – he doesn’t know, he actually doesn’t know how long he’s been sitting there – Ignis stands, and makes his way to the apartment’s kitchen. Inside, the hum of the refrigerator greets him, along with distant street chatter from beyond the window at the far end of the room. It’s been cramped in here since he started cooking again. He nearly runs straight into a pan handle extended too far out from the stove, and turns it back away from himself in annoyance. The sink sits right next to the stove, and Ignis gently sets the berries on the grimy tile countertop beside him, grasps a small handful, and washes them off under the faucet. When they’re clean, the little round fruits roll around in the palm of his hand.

Carefully, cautiously, Ignis pops one in his mouth.

As soon as he does, Tenebrae is burning again.

It hadn’t been enough for the Imperials to torch Fleuret Manor; they had taken express pains to burn the gardens surrounding it as well. As soon as he stepped off the train, Ignis had choked on the acrid smell of burning plant life.

Ignis grips the counter, and the berries fall from his hand. He doesn’t have the presence of mind to care. A million thoughts race through his head – Tenebrae, Regis, _Noctis_ , Noctis smiling, Noctis eating a tart, Noctis’s voice, scratchy from crying over Luna and yelling at him about Prompto.

Today might be a day where Ignis needs to cancel his rounds.

*

Prompto can’t breathe.

When he wakes up he doesn’t know where he is, only that he’s covered in something heavy and suffocating and he can’t breathe, almost like draped over him might be a familiar gray coat, or a scratchy dorm blanket, but it doesn’t matter when he can’t breathe, he can’t breathe, holy _shit he can’t_ –

He gasps out in the dark, just as icy cold seeps into his skin. Prompto blinks rapidly, catching his breath, and his right hand clenches around the fabric covering him.

It’s a quilt. The same quilt he’s been sleeping with for years, with multi-colored triangle patches, made by Cindy years and years ago. His eyes re-focus. Faintly, he sees the concrete walls of Hammerhead’s side room. _His_ room.

There is nothing alive here save for the pounding of his own heart. He is alone. He is alone in the room.

Prompto takes another breath, then another. He shakes his head – partially to clear it, partially because he feels like an idiot.

His first thought after he comes back to himself is: _how long will it be like this?_

He looks around the room, his eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark. Set close to the seam where the ceiling meets the wall is a long window, like something you’d see in a cellar. Flakes of daemonic miasma have stained the glass, piling up on the sill outside. Besides that, all he sees is black – no stars, and no moon.

Experts say – from the years-old articles that are still accessible with a Moogle search – that the best thing to do after a nightmare is to ground oneself. But what if everything looks the same, with nothing but darkness surrounding you? What if luxuries like stress balls and putty are nowhere to be found? What if you don’t want to be _here and now_ either?

Prompto’s eyeline drifts, on the cusp of dissociating, until his vision catches on his clothes chest, pressed against the far wall. Inside, he knows, buried deep under socks with holes he hasn’t repaired yet, wrapped in his bloodstained old vest, is his LOKTON.

According to those mental health articles, frozen in time from when the sun still shone, the camera with all its little buttons and mechanical intricacies should be the perfect tool to focus on. But with the old, comforting technology comes memories – memories of better times, true, but oftentimes those hurt worse than the ones cannibalized for his nightmares.

His hands fidget, twisting the quilt.

Maybe.

Maybe it might just be nice to take a look. Maybe it won’t ache so much this time.

Before he knows it Prompto is hunched over his clothes chest, cradling the camera in his hands like the fragile and precious remnant of the old world that it is. He sits on the edge of his cot and turns it on, meeting with a white light, blinding in the dark; then afterwards warm smiles, black hair, green eyes, and more sunlight than he’s seen in years.

When Prompto finds himself back in bed, his pillow is damp and he wishes he’d never unearthed the thing at all.

*

Gladio keeps his phone off these days.

Ideally, he wouldn’t be keeping the thing on him at all. Upon returning to Lucis from Niflheim at the start of all this bullshit, he nearly threw it over the edge of the railing at Cape Caem. He still thinks about it, sometimes, when he feels the weight of the little black thing in his pocket while trudging through the ruined plateaus of Duscae.

The storm-darkened sea below him. The miasma just starting to settle over the landscape, like a thin layer of ash coating everything. He imagines throwing the phone as hard as he can, watching it bounce off the rocky shoreline below with a satisfying _crack_ , and flying into an oceanscape so black that even the lighthouse can’t penetrate it.

In the end, though, it’s a safety measure. He needs to be able to call someone at an outpost if he gets so injured he can’t make it to a Haven, or better yet, so that someone out there can track down his corpse.

He thinks about dying. A lot.

Not death by suicide, although some would argue that’s exactly what he’s doing out here, wandering from Haven to Haven and outpost to outpost hunting daemons on his own. It’s more like – Gladio wonders what it would _mean_ , if he died out in the wilderness. What would it say about his nobility, about his calling? What would it say about the world around him?

What would Gilgamesh think, with all the potential he saw in him?

What about his dad?

Up ahead, the glowing blue runes of Haven stone cut through trees and mental fog alike. Gladio’s legs pound with pain from all the wandering he’s done. It’s time to stop and rest.

When he finally scrambles up onto the flat top of the Haven, he doesn’t think about Prompto’s relieved laughter. When he rolls his pack off his shoulders and gets to work setting up his tent, he doesn’t think about how no matter how many times he walked him through it, Noctis never got the hang of how to build one. When he builds a meager fire, setting a small camp kettle over it to make a cup of coffee, he doesn’t think about how Ignis’s things always smelled like smoke and Ebony.

Once the coffee is done, Gladio lays back on his bedroll, hot tin cup cradled across his chest in one hand. The dark sky is framed by the swaying tree branches of the trees surrounding the Haven. He peers and peers, looking for stars. Six years, and he’s still searching for them every time he lies down to rest.

He sighs, rubbing a free hand over his eyes. By his feet, the campfire remnants are still smoldering. Daemons roar in the distance; he can see the blade of a Red Giant arc through the air some mile or two away, and the edges of the phone in his pocket seem to dig harder into his flesh.

Gladio’s eyes begin drifting shut, despite the coffee, despite the fact that he’s not even inside of his tent yet. It doesn’t matter. In his sleepy haze, he can almost swear that he does see something pierce through the black skies – shards of blue crystal, glittering like the stars he misses so much.

Gladio doesn’t remember anything about it when he wakes up.

*

He is alone.

That’s the only thing that seems to matter anymore.

There is nothing here in this crystalline void, this bright, swirling abyss. No sound, no matter how hard he yells. No substance, no matter how hard he tries to find his body. Even Bahamut has left.

Despite it all, he hopes – he _hopes_ , with everything inside him, all the power that he has ever been given – that he can find his way home soon.

Noctis drifts, enclosed in the memories of his broken family.


End file.
